toledoblade.com --

Toledo will know Tuesday whether any companies will bid to provide a citywide Wi-Fi network

When officials in Michigan's Washtenaw County decided to create a Wi-Fi network, they tapped expertise from public schools, universities, government, and business.

When Philadelphia wanted to go wireless, it brought everyone into the discussion, from neighborhood leaders to business leaders.

When the city of Buffalo, Minn., saw Wi-Fi (short for wireless fidelity) in its future, the folks in city hall came up with a business plan that included an eight-page explanation of how the city would make its investment back.

When Toledo decided it wanted Wi-Fi, conversations seldom extended far beyond city hall. The news conference where bid specifications were revealed Jan. 17 was the first public discussion of the technology.

The project's financing depends upon the willingness of private companies to give the city free service, adhere to the city's price limits, and pay the city for the use of its equipment - all while shouldering the cost of the building and operating a wireless network across the city's 88 square miles.

Toledo will know Tuesday if it has the correct formula to attract some of these riches. That's when its bid deadline for a Wi-Fi contract comes due.

But the situation appeared cloudy last week when a potential bidder, 20/20 Communications, which is installing a 720-square-mile Wi-Fi network in Washtenaw County, dropped out of the Toledo bidding.

"It is hard to find a business model that works" under the terms of Toledo's requirements, William Lockwood of 20/20 Communications wrote in a letter to the city.

The decision by 20/20 not to bid, however, could be an attempt to get Toledo to reconsider its approach to Wi-Fi.

The letter went on to say: "That does not mean that we will not be interested in talking about how to do such a project in the Toledo area.''

"We'd love to be part of it. But there really isn't time to do what we would normally do," Mr. Lockwood told The Blade.

"The truth is, if they're short of people to work with, if they don't get bids, I urge them to just get everybody else together and talk about it and see what you can do in Toledo," he said.

City officials did not return phone calls seeking comment.

The status of other potential bidders is uncertain. Some have complained about the deadline and the city's business model, but no potential bidder objected to the deadline in writing - the only way the city would consider a delay.

Officials from Buckeye CableSystem, which, like The Blade, is owned by Block Communications Inc., said Friday that they still had not decided whether to bid.

CISP, another Toledo Internet provider, and EarthLink, the national Internet provider named early on by city officials as a potential bidder, declined comment.

Doing it right

Mr. Lockwood's plea for reconsideration - should the city's bid process fall flat - is rooted in his experience in Washtenaw County, where government officials decided they had nothing to lose and everything to gain by going slow and even delaying bid deadlines multiple times.

"We made a policy decision … that we were going to do this right. We may have to delay some time lines, we may take some guff for that, but we want to do this right,'' said David B. Behen, deputy county administrator for Washtenaw County, where Ann Arbor is the county seat.

The county also solicited broad participation in planning from community groups.

"My philosophy was, let's get as many people involved as we can. They've all got skin in the game. No one wants to be part of something that fails," Mr. Behen said.

Many communities are showing that Wi-Fi can boost a community's public image, improve the chance for all citizens to enter the digital age, and allow cities to offer faster police and fire response, more efficient government services, and even better emergency medical care.

Focus on success

Washtenaw County wasn't consciously following wireless consultant Craig Settles' plan for Wi-Fi success. It just looks like it.

Mr. Settles is a technology consultant in Oakland, Calif., who operates Successful.com, and he's analyzed the success stories.

He wrote a book about Philadelphia's Wi-Fi plan, Fighting the Good Fight for Municipal Wireless, which brought that city an enviable deal from EarthLink, which has been making a big push in Wi-Fi technology.

Philadelphia's success grew from its planning, Mr. Settles said. The city created a steering committee with a broad cross-section of community representation. It had 12 to 15 focus groups with various constituents and then used the focus group results to create a needs analysis.

This was followed by two town meetings. Only then did officials write a business plan covering even possible business models, marketing, and operations, Mr. Settles said.

The whole process took just 90 days - "not your typical government thing where we expect it to take six years and be out of date when it's done. At the end of the process, they had a [request for proposals] that reflected the technical issues, that reflected the community issues at hand, and I think they ended up getting a better end result because of that process," Mr. Settles said.

Paying dividends

The city of Buffalo, Minn., took a different approach. Administrators mapped out a financial plan to convince city council of the wisdom of Wi-Fi. The city spent $500,000 and built the network itself.

"We showed the council how we can pay for this within five years,'' said Merton Auger, the administrator in this city of 15,000 about 40 miles northwest of Minneapolis and St. Paul.

As it turns out, the city will make back its investment a year early, and it is paying other dividends as well. With the Wi-Fi service, residents can go to the city's Web site and report a problem, such as a pothole.

"I've had cases where someone sent a message, and within five minutes someone was fixing the thing," Mr. Auger said. "The resident called up and said, 'This is amazing.' It saves on fuel because [workers] are able to get instructions and requests right where they are, and also, it's a productivity thing."

Mr. Auger said the residents who use the system "expect to interact with us like they do with businesses like Amazon [the online retailer] or their bank. They don't want to come to city hall. They want to do this anytime they want. This system allows us to do that."

Contact Jenni Laidman at:
jenni@theblade.com or
419-724-6507.

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